Did we really get an expansion? Or did we just lose the original eight decks?

The expansion decks are exciting and diverse. This is a good thing, I think we can all appreciate that Wizards have done a good job in designing them.

They are however, massively overpowered in comparison to all of the pre-expansion decks, so much so that taking any of them online is certain to result a frustrating string of losses, interrupted only in the odd game in which you opponent get mana screwed/flooded (or they are just terrible at the game).

As such, rather than adding to the variety of decks in the game the expansion has reduced it from 8 to 5. Sad times.

But why did wizards do this? It can't have been a mistake. I would love to hear from a WOTC representative on this.

There's already a thread on this, the general consensus is that 2 or 3 of them are on par with the best decks that we already had. The others are just "good"

Give it some time and firstly the novelty of new stuff will wear off and people will play the older decks more, and secondly people will get more used to playing against the new decks, and know HOW to play against them in the same way we do for the older ones.

That's funny, I've just been having fun stomping DLC deck users with the old decks. Particularly easy when you consider many people go for Rakdos/Golgari, both being very easy to answer with the old decks.

Goblins lost a lot of the quality it used to have, and so did mill. The old decks that have been working better lately are crosswinds, obedient dead and a control oriented peacekeepers. Overall the new decks are really good at dealing with fast decks but fold to decks that are even more control-ish.

a properly built obedient dead deck with a well trained PLAYER, that knows when to mulligan or not (and it's not always about a lack of land or too much), when to play the cards and when not to, etc will win vs most decks most of the time. And I agree gobs lost alot of quality, mill however really never had much, just luck with it when you do win.

Mill does have a tough time against Rakdos though. The other day my opponent went T0 chancelor of the spires milling me for 7, only for me to reanimate my Grave Titan on turn 1. That match didn't last long.